Juan Espadas, secretary general of the PSOE of Andalusia, has the enemy at home. To the critical voices of recent weeks, nearly fifty Andalusian socialists are now joining to demand “a new course and a new direction” within the party, which has four consecutive electoral defeats against the PP (autonomous in 2022, municipal and general). of 2023 and European elections of 2024). All with Swords in the lead, who has already announced that he wants to run for re-election at the head of the PSOE-A.
The article, titled Andalusia and Andalusian socialismappears published this Wednesday in the newspapers of the Joly Group and is signed by 48 people, including José Caballos, former socialist spokesperson in the Parliament of Andalusia and senator, as well as three former presidents of the Provincial Council of Malaga (Juan Fraile, Salvador Pendón and José María Ruiz Povedano), a former president of the Provincial Delegation of Seville (Luis Navarrete) or the one who was deputy mayor of the Seville City Council during the mandates of Espadas. (Juan Manuel Flores).
The article begins by recalling that in 1977 the PSOE won the first elections in Andalusia with 36.7% of the votes and 27 deputies and remained in power until 2018. “We govern our territory to make it fairer, more prosperous and more modern than that of Andalusia. 1982.
They also criticize the management of the president of the Junta and the Andalusian PP, Juanma Moreno, whom they accuse of “wasting” state funds “on tax gifts to the rich and on contracts with companies privatizing public services”, but they recall that “despite this, “the PP obtained the absolute majority in the Andalusian elections of 2022 with 19 points, 700,000 votes and 28 deputies more than the PSOE”. “After this defeat, the one who was the standard bearer of Spanish socialism added three more in two years A complete cycle so unprecedented that even Espadas admitted to the press last September that “the objectives” he had set for himself had not been achieved.
“This very negative cycle, especially in Andalusia, began in December 2018 because, although it was the first force and with the same candidacy (Susana Díaz), the PSOE of Andalusia had 400,000 votes and 14 deputies less than the previous ones in 2015”, they add, but Moreno was invested with the support of Cs and Vox and the PSOE-A was excluded from the government of the Junta for the first time in its history.
“There are a lot of unnecessary diatribes about who and to what extent blames the worst results of Andalusian socialism in four decades. What corresponds now, before falling into the absurd continuity of a present that neither remembers nor expects, is betting on a new course and a new direction of the PSOE of Andalusia which, on the basis of a reactivated and participatory activism in a strong party, raise the expectations of the progressive social majority, which awaits us”, they warn.
The article ends with an ode to Pedro Sánchez, of whom they highlight “his courage and determination”, and to whom they guarantee their support in the next Federal Congress of the PSOE to be held in Seville, because “his progressive policy which benefits several million Spaniards. They also emphasize that, “against all odds and against all expectations”, he managed to “maintain the presidency of the government with almost 4 points and 900,000 votes more than in 2019”.
“Andalusian democratic socialism will once again be, if it proposes and unites around a new project for Andalusia in the 21st century, the common home of the left and the great party of Andalusians,” concludes the manifesto.
It is worth remembering that a few weeks ago, another socialist spokesperson in the Parliament of Andalusia, Mario Jiménez, now a grassroots deputy, called for the dismissal of Espadas. “If we do not change the PSOE-A, we will not change Andalusia,” he said on his social networks. Nine days before the Federal Congress of the PSOE, Espadas is, more than ever, facing the anvil, and it is his own colleagues who are calling for his head.
